Experimenting with responses to your baby's communications is a great strength

The capacity to experiment your way through life with your baby is a great strength. The psychological research tells us that people who can be flexible in their responses to life, trying one thing, trying another, are more resilient when faced with life’s challenges. You'll soon find you're constantly experimenting with responses to your baby’s communications, trying something else if the first thing you try doesn’t work to dial him down.

Parents often say to me they have no idea what their baby is communicating. I explain that this is normal. No-one ever really knows what their baby is trying to communicate! But we experiment to see what works.

Experimenting with your responses is like paddle-boarding or surfing

To navigate a river on a paddleboard or in a canoe, or to surf the ocean waves, we're adapting all the time to the swell and movement of the water beneath us. We're repeatedly shifting our weight, adjusting our posture.

Caring for a baby is much like this. We respond, we experiment, we adjust. Some days everything seems reasonably easy. Some days there is a swell or heavy surf and it's very hard going. Sometimes what we try doesn’t work and we fall right off into the water. We get back on and try again.

And again.

That's the nature of experimenting, when we're caring for a baby! Constant problem solving, constantly checking out new ideas to see what feels right, at least for now.

You could call it The Great Muddling Through!

If your baby cries and fusses a lot, you might feel completely at a loss, and demoralised. Having a baby who cries excessively is a crisis for families. If this is your family’s situation, please take a look at the Possums articles on the crying baby, and also have your baby checked over by your family doctor.

Recommended resources

The discontented little baby book. Dr Pamela Douglas